Roman Catholicism

by Rudolf Steiner

Lecture I

Dornach, May 30, 1920

My Dear Friends,

To carry our spiritual understanding of things farther, we shall need
more and more to turn our attention to certain historical facts.
During the last decades our members have led a pleasant life, devoted
entirely to the acquisition of knowledge from the lectures and
discussions which have been held in different places. Nevertheless,
this has formed an impenetrable wall, over which in many cases there
has been a great reluctance to look out at what was happening in the
outside world. But, if we want to see what is happening in the world
in the right light, if we do not wish to found a sect but an
historical movement — something which no other movement than
ours can be — then we need to know the historical background
for what is all around us in the world. And the way in which we
ourselves are treated, particularly here in this place, where we have
never done anything in the slightest degree aggressive, makes it
doubly necessary for us really to look over the wall and to
understand something of what is going on in the world. Therefore, I
should like to combine what I have to say in the next few days with
some historical comments, in order to draw attention to certain
facts, without a knowledge of which we shall probably not now be able
to get any further.

Today I want first of all to point out one thing. You know that about
the beginning of the last third of the Nineteenth Century something
found a foothold in the various civilized states of Europe and
America, which was known as a realistic conception of life, a
conception of life which was in essentials based on the achievements
of the Nineteenth Century and on those which had prepared the way for
that century. At the beginning of the last third of the Nineteenth
Century people everywhere spoke in quite a different way, their
underlying tone was different from what it became in the later
decades, and still more in the decades of the Twentieth Century. The
forms of thought which dominated wide circles became during this time
essentially different. Today I will only mention one example. At the
beginning of the last third of the Nineteenth Century the belief
prevailed among educated people that the human being ought to form
his own convictions out of his own inner self, about the most
important affairs of life; and that even if, helped by the
discoveries of science, he does so, a common social life is,
nevertheless, possible in the civilized world. There was, so to say,
a kind of dogma, but a dogma freely recognized in the widest circles,
that, among people who had reached a certain degree of culture, freedom
of conscience was possible. It is true that in the decades that
followed no one had the courage to attack this dogma openly; but
there was more or less unconscious opposition to it. And at the
present time, after the great world catastrophe [the First World War], straightaway this
dogma is something which in the widest circles is being repressed, is
being nullified, though, of course, that fact is more or less
disguised. In the sixties of the Nineteenth Century the belief
prevailed in the widest circles that the human being must have a
certain freedom as regards everything connected with his religion. The emergence of this belief was noted in certain quarters, and
I have already pointed out how on the 8th December, 1864,
Rome launched an attack against it. I have often told you how this
whole movement was handled by Rome, how in the Papal Encyclical of
1864, which appeared at the same time as the Syllabus, it is
expressly said: “The view that freedom of conscience and of
religion is given to each human being as his own right is a folly and a
delusion.”

At the time when Europe was experiencing the high tide, a provisional
high tide, of this conception of freedom of conscience and of
religious worship, Rome made an official pronouncement that it was a
delusion.

I only want to put this before you as an historic fact; and in so
doing I want to call your attention to what took place at a time
when, for a large number of people, this question had arisen and
called for a response from out the very springs of human conscience —
the question: “How do we as human beings make progress in our
religious life?” This question, posed in deep earnestness and
really in such a way as to show that consciences were involved, was a
significant question of the time. I should just like to read you
something which illustrates how the cultured people of the day were
deeply preoccupied with it.

There are in existence speeches of Rumelin whom I mentioned
recently in connection with Julius Robert Mayer and the Law of
Conservation of Energy. There exist speeches of Rumelin made in the
year 1875, thus in this very period of which I am now speaking. In
them he analyzed the difficulties humanity experiences in this very
matter of the further study of religious questions. He also points
out how necessary it is to follow these difficulties with clear
insight. Anyone with intimate knowledge of this period knows that the
following words of Rumelin expressed the conviction of many hundreds
of men. Of course we do not need to advocate the peculiar form of
science which arose at that time; insofar as we are Anthroposophists
we are equipped to develop those scientific tendencies further, with
a clear perception of their relative errors; and we are also equipped
for recognizing that if science remains stationary at that standpoint
we can get absolutely no farther with it. In the widest circles
judgments arose on many points to do with religion, and we should
recall these judgments today. The thoughts of thousands of people at
that time were expressed by Rumelin in 1875 in the following words:
“There has indeed at all times been a line of demarcation
between knowledge and belief, but never has there been such an
impassable abyss between them as that constituted today by the
concept of miracle. Science has grown so strong in its own
development, so consistent in its various branches and trends, that
it flatly and without further ado points the door to the miracle in
every shape and form. It recognizes only the miracle of all miracles,
that a world exists and just this world. But within the cosmos it
rejects absolutely any claim that interruption of its order and of
its laws is something conceivable or in any way more desirable than
their immutable validity. For to all the natural-historical and
philosophical sciences the miracle with all its implications is
nonsense, a direct outrage on all reason and on the most elementary
bases of human knowledge. Science and miracle are as contradictory as
reason and unreason.”

When, about the turning point of the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries, I began to speak in public lectures on certain
anthroposophical questions, a last echo of the mood I have just
described still existed. I do not know whether there are many here
who followed these first lectures of mine, but in many of them I drew
attention to the problems of repeated earth lives and of the destiny
of human beings as they pass through one life after another. Now in
dealing with these problems you will find that I always pointed out
right at the end of the lecture that if one believes in the old
Aristotelian idea that every time a person is born a new soul is
created that has to be implanted into the human embryo, a miracle is
thereby ordained for every single life. The concept of miracle can
only be overcome in a sense that is justified if one accepts
reincarnation, whereby each single life can be linked up with the
previous life on earth without any miracle. I still remember well
that I concluded one of my Berlin lectures with these words: “We
are going to overcome in the right way that most important thing, the
concept of miracle.”

Since then, of course, things have changed throughout the civilized
world. That is primarily a historical fact, my dear friends, but it
comprises something which is of the utmost interest to us. That is,
that in the measure in which man loses the capacity to see the
spiritual in the world, to explain the world of nature around him by
the spirit, in that same measure must he place a special world side
by side with nature and the ordinary world, which has as its content
the world of miracle. The more natural science takes its stand on
mere causality, the more the life of human feeling is driven, by a
quite natural reaction, to accept the concept of miracle. The more
natural science continues along its present lines, the more numerous
will be those who seek refuge in a religion which includes miracles.
That is why today so many men embrace Catholicism, because they
simply cannot bear the natural-scientific conception of the world.

Take that sentence which I have just read, and compare it with what
has been said in recent lectures here, and you will at once see what
is in question. In this exposition of Rumelin occurs this sentence:
“It recognizes only the miracle of all miracles, that a world
exists, and just this world. But it rejects absolutely any claim that
within the cosmos interruption of its order and of its laws is
conceivable or in any way more desirable than their immutable
validity.” Thus one thinks the primeval miracle, that the
cosmos has come into being at all, but then, within this cosmos, one
studies the Laws of Indestructibility of Matter and Conservation of
Energy, and then everything rolls on with a certain necessity, so to
say fatalistically.

That conception of the world is untenable, but it can only be
overcome through the knowledge which I ventured to put before you
last week, when I showed you that the Laws of Indestructibility of
Matter and Conservation of Energy constitute an error, and that error
is what above all has to be vigorously combated in our time. We have
to do not merely with a continuous conservation of the universe, but
with its continual destruction and coming into fresh existence. And
if we do not establish in the cosmos the idea of a continual arising
and passing away, we are obliged because we are human to affirm a
special world side by side with the cosmos, a world which has nothing
to do with the laws of nature that we demonstrate so one-sidedly, and
which must include miracle. That unjustified concept of miracle will
only be overcome in the measure in which we understand that
everything in the world stands in a spiritual ordering in which we no
longer have to do with an iron necessity of nature but with a cosmic
guidance full of wisdom. The more we keep our gaze fixed upon the
spiritual world as such and upon what we acquire through spiritual
science, the more do we realize that what natural science puts before
us today needs to be permeated by spiritual knowledge. It must
therefore become our task to direct our attention more and more upon
every science and upon all branches of life in such a way that they
become permeated by what only spiritual science has to say. Medicine,
jurisprudence and sociology must all be permeated by what can be
known and seen through spiritual science. Spiritual science does not
need any organization similar to that of the old churches, for it
appeals to each single individual; and each single individual, out of
his own inner conscience, through his own healthy understanding, can
substantiate the results of spiritual-scientific investigation, and
can in this sense become a follower of spiritual science. It puts
forward something which makes a direct appeal to every single
individuality just in this search for truth. It is the true
fulfillment of what men were seeking in the time now past, in the
last third of the Nineteenth Century — true freedom —
freedom in their conception of the world, in their research and even
in their opinions. That is just the task of spiritual science- to
provide for the genuine justifiable claims made by the conscience of
modern humanity. Hence for spiritual science there are no such things
as closed dogmas, only unrestricted research which does not draw back
in fear at the frontiers either of the spiritual world or of the
world of nature, but which makes use of those human powers of
cognition which have first to be drawn from the depths of human
feeling, just as it also uses those powers which come to us through
ordinary heredity and ordinary education.

This basic tendency of spiritual science is very naturally a thorn in
the flesh to those who are forced to teach in accordance with a
fixed, dogmatic, circumscribed aim. And that brings us to a fact of
considerable concern to spiritual science, and one of the
illuminating circumstances making possible the present untrue fight
against us today; that brings us to something which is only the
result of what began in 1864 with the Encyclical and Syllabus of that
time; that brings us to the fact that the whole of the Catholic
clergy and especially the teaching clergy, by the Encyclical of the
8th September, 1907: Pascendi Dominici gregis,
which makes such a deep incision into modern life, were made to swear
the so-called oath against modernism. This oath consists in this —
that every Catholic priest or theologian who teaches either from the
pulpit or from the rostrum is obliged to accept the view that no
knowledge of any kind can contradict what has been laid down as
doctrine by the Roman Church. That means that in every Catholic
priest who teaches or preaches we have to do with a person who has
sworn an oath that every truth that can ever take root in humanity
must agree with what is given validity as truth by Rome. It was a
powerful movement which, at the time this Encyclical “Pascendi
Dominici gregis” appeared, swept over the Catholic clergy’
for the whole civilized world, even the clergy, had in a sense been
influenced by that mood which I have described as characteristic of
the last third of the Nineteenth Century. There were always certain
clergy who worked to bring about a certain freedom in Catholicism.

I say quite frankly that in the sixties of the Nineteenth Century in
a large number of the Catholic clergy seeds of development of the
Catholic principle were present which, if they had passed over into a
free science, might in large measure have led to a liberation of
modern humanity. There were most promising seeds in what was
attempted at that time in various spheres on the part of the Catholic
clergy. One day we must go into all this more closely and in great
detail. But today I just want to draw your attention to it. And it
was directly against this tendency inside the Church that the
Encyclical of 1864 with its Syllabus was promulgated, and thus began
that conflict which came to an end for the time being in the
Anti-Modernist Oath. I may say that in the subconsciousness of many
of the Catholic clergy, even as late as 1907, there was a trace of
inward revolt, but in the Catholic Church there is no such thing as
revolt. There it was a question of ceaselessly pressing home the
axiom that what is promulgated by Rome as doctrine must be accepted.
Then those who were obliged to go on teaching had to come to terms
with what they had not the courage to deny, the freedom of science.
Under the influence of what had arisen in the last third of the
Nineteenth Century, the freedom of science had become a household
word, a household word that, of course, even in liberal circles,
often remained nothing more, but it was nevertheless a household
word, and even learned Catholics had not the courage to say that they
would break with the freedom of science and have nothing further to
do with it. So they had the task of proving that one may only teach
what is recognized by Rome as doctrinally valid (this they had to
swear on oath) and that the freedom of science was consistent with
this. I should like to read you a few sentences illustrating such a
method of proof, given by the Catholic theologian Weber of Freiburg
in this book Catholic Doctrine and the Freedom of Science. He
there attempts specifically to prove that although a man may
admittedly be obliged by his oath only to teach the content of what
he is instructed by Rome to teach, he can notwithstanding remain a
free scientist. After having argued at length that even mathematics
is something given to one and that one does not surrender the freedom
of science because one is bound by the truths of mathematics, he goes
on to show that one does not surrender one’s freedom because
one is compelled to teach as truth what is given by Rome; and one of
his sentences is as follows: “A scholar is bound to specific
methods of explanation or proof; just as the obligation of a soldier
to rejoin his regiment at a certain time does not take from him his
freedom, for he can either go on foot or by coach, by slow train or
express, so the teacher still remains free in his scientific task in
spite of his oath.”

That means that one is compelled to teach a definite body of
doctrine, and to prove just that body of doctrine; as to how one does
it one is left free. Just as free as a soldier who has sworn to join
his regiment at a certain time, and who can travel either on foot or
by coach, or by the slow or the express train. One ought to ask
oneself how this going by foot or by coach, by slow train or by
express has to end. Under all circumstances it has to end in joining
his regiment. I am not making polemics, I am simply citing a
historical fact.

You see in the course of preceding centuries and culminating in the
last third of the Nineteenth Century there had gradually developed a
mood in wide circles of the cultivated world which seemed full of
promise. But all that is now dormant; souls have gone to sleep. Those
who share the mood of that time are obviously now very old, are among
the old discarded liberals, and those who were young during the last
decades have not been awake to the very important claims of humanity.
Hence if the decline is not to go further we have to challenge the
youth of today to act otherwise. The generation living in the sixties
of the Nineteenth Century could become a generation of Liberals but
was not able to provide a liberal education. For that it would have
had to master the concept of miracle in quite a different way than
the way adopted by natural science. For that the concept of miracle
would have to be surmounted by the spirit and not by the mechanical
ordering of nature. And so, whereas this mood came over modern
humanity like a kind of dream, those who worked against it were wide
awake, and it was out of their waking consciousness that such things
were born as the Encyclical and Syllabus of the year 1864, with its
eighty numbered errors in which no Catholic might believe. In these
eighty errors is to be found everything which implies a modern
conception of the world. Now comes once more out of the fullest
waking consciousness, the latest inevitable achievement, the
Encyclical of the year 1907, culminating in the Anti-modernist Oath.
Not only have these people been awake since the last third of the
Nineteenth Century, but for a much longer time than that they have
worked radically, energetically and intensively and the task they
have achieved is what I might call the concentration of all
Catholicism on Rome — the suppression in Catholicism of all
that inevitably deprived the freest of all churches of its freedom;
for in its essential nature the Catholic Church is capable of the
greatest freedom. You will perhaps be astonished that I should say
that. But let us go back a little way from our enlightened freedom
from authority into the Thirteenth Century, which we have recently
discussed in public lectures. I should like to recall to your minds
in this connection a document of the Thirteenth Century, when
Catholicism in Europe was in full flower.

It has to do with the question of the nomination by Rome of Albertus
Magnus, one of the founders of Scholasticism, as Bishop of
Regensburg. I need hardly say that in the Catholic Church today there
could be no two opinions but that this nomination to one of the
foremost bishoprics greatly enhanced the dignity of a Dominican who
up to that time had merely laid the foundations of a reputation by
numerous important writings and by a pious life spent in the affairs
of his Order. For today the Catholic Church is a compact organism,
and it has become so by having been completely transformed. When
Albertus Magnus was about to be nominated Bishop of Regensburg, the
Head of his Order sent him a letter which read somewhat as follows:
“The Head of the Order beseeches Albertus Magnus not to accept
the bishopric, not to bring such a stain on his good name and on the
reputation of his Order. He should not submit to the desires of the
Roman Court, where things are not taken seriously. All the good
service which he has hitherto rendered by his pious life and writings
would be imperiled if he became a bishop and entangled in the
business which as bishop he would have to discharge; he should not
plunge his Order into such deep sorrow.”

My dear friends, at that time there were voices in the Church that
spoke thus. At that time the Catholic Church was no compact mass;
within the Church it was possible to be plunged into deep sorrow if
someone was chosen for an office which he knew was not regarded
seriously in Rome. In the biographies of Thomas Aquinas we find
mentioned over and over again that he refused the office of Cardinal.
Today I am giving you some of the real reasons why that was so; in
the biographies you will find mentioned the bare fact of his refusal.
It is not easy to give the reasons after having made him the official
philosopher of the Church!

But I should like to translate literally one sentence out of that
letter to which I have referred, form the Head of his Order to
Albertus Magnus: “I would rather hear that my dear son was in
his grave than on the Episcopal throne of Regensburg.”

My dear friends, it is not enough simply to speak of the dark ages
and to compare them with our own times, in which we are supposed to
have made such magnificent progress; but, if we want to form
judgments, we must know some of the historical facts as to how things
have developed in the course of time. No doubt you are aware that
Jesuit influence is behind many of the attacks on us. You know, for
instance, that form the Jesuit side came the most flagrant lies; for
instance, the accusation that I myself had once been a priest and had
forsaken the priesthood. And you know that a few years later the
person who uttered this lie could not think of anything else to say
except that this hypothesis could not further be held. In the
Austrian Parliament a member named Walterkirchen once shouted at a
Minister: “If a man has once lied, no one believes him even if
afterwards he speaks the truth.” But Jesuitism stands behind
all these things; one can point to many things growing on the soil of
Jesuitism, but in this respect also I only want today to point to a
historic fact.

It is a fundamental point of the Jesuit rule to render absolute
obedience to the Pope. Now in the Eighteenth Century there lived a
Pope who suppressed the Jesuit Order irrevocably for all eternity —
literally for all eternity. If the Jesuits had remained true to their
own rule they would, of course, never have appeared on the scene
again. However, they did not disappear but took refuge in countries
where there were rulers at that time less favorable to Rome, rulers
who thought that by serving Jesuitism they could serve the future,
not of humanity but of themselves and their successors. For the
Jesuit Order was saved by two rulers, Frederick II of Prussia and
Catherine of Russia. In Roman Catholic countries the Jesuit Order was
not recognized as having a valid existence. The Jesuits of today owe
it to Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine of Russia that they were
able to survive that period when they were persecuted by Rome. I am
not making polemics, I am merely stating historic facts. But these
historic facts are quite unknown to most people, and it is necessary
that they shall be borne in mind, because we must no longer be a sect
which has built a wall round itself. We must look at what is around
us and learn to understand it. That is our undoubted duty if we
desire to be true to that movement in which we profess to live.

You see, it is one of the worst and most harmful signs of the time
that people trouble so little about facts and have no inclination to
ask how they have come about, to ask whence has come the present
revolt against us, from what source it is being nourished. Such
judgments as proceeded from the mood which I characterized as the
mood of the last third of the Nineteenth Century are less and less to
be heard today. It is really astounding how little human beings today
know of what is going on in the world. For they slept through the
event of the Encyclical “Pascendi Dominici gregis” of
September 8, 1907, whereby the oath against Modernism was imposed on
the Catholic clergy. Voices such as would certainly have been raised
by such a man as the Dominican General who preferred to see his dear
son in the grave rather than on the Episcopal throne of Regensburg,
are no longer heard; instead of that, people listen nowadays to
voices which explain that a man can still be a free scientist if he
swears that he can use any methods he likes to prove what he teaches;
it does not matter whether he travels by express train or slow train,
in a coach or on foot.

What leaps logic has to make if such proofs are to be used! I need
not enlarge on this. But most people have no idea of the power lying
in what at the present time is specially directed against us, who
have never attacked anyone, and of what that power signifies. It is
not sufficient to say that these things are really too stupid to
notice. For, my dear friends, in the assertions constantly made about
us, you will only find two things that can be affirmed with truth.
For instance, when “Spectator” was reproached for having
said his source was a book,
the “Akashic Record,” and was told that that must have
been a deliberate lie, for he must have known that he could not
possess the “Akashic Record” in his library, he
extricated himself as follows: “First, let me say that a
printer’s error slipped into our second article. Akaskic Record
instead of Akashic Record. This mistake Dr. Boos has noted with
glee. He seems to strain at gnats and to swallow camels. In the same
article there is another misprint; for Apollinaris, of course, one
should read Apollonius of Ryana! This Dr. Boos has overlooked —
perhaps intentionally!”

Now, my dear friends, if Akaskic Record had been allowed to stand, I
should not have complained, for that could be a misprint! And I would
even go so far as to accept that a man of intellectual caliber to
which the article bears witness could write Apollinaris instead of
Apollonius of Tyana. I do not even hold it against him that he quotes
as being among the sources from which we draw, someone whom he dubs
with the name Apollinaris! But, my dear friends, it must be called
a downright falsehood when it is maintained that the Akashic Record is
something from which Anthroposophy is unjustifiably derived as from
an ancient book. How does the gentleman wriggle out of this? He does
not admit that there is anything with which to reproach him. He says:
“This Akashic Record is a legendary secret writing which
contains traces of the eternal truths of all ancient wisdom; it plays
a part similar to that of the obscure book ‘The Stanzas of
Dzyan’ which Madame Blavatsky claims to have found in a cave in
Tibet, etc. etc.” Thus he makes clear to his flock that he can
speak of this Akashic Record as of any other record once written
down; and naturally they believe him. But I want to draw attention to
two things. One is his statement: “Steiner considers he has
rendered great service by rejuvenating Buddhism and enriching it by
the introduction of the doctrines of reincarnation and karma, his own
specialties.”

Needless to say I never made any such claim, not one single sentence
of what has so far been published is true, or at most one thing, a
thing which will perhaps always cause a headache to those who write
in this strain. The one thing which can be looked upon as in any way
true is in the passage in which he says: “The Gnostics also
professed an esoteric doctrine and divided men into the Hyliker
(ordinary people, the general run of men) and the Pneumatiker
(theosophists) in whom was the fullness of the spirit and among whom
therefore a higher knowledge (initiation) prevailed. The latter
refrained from meat and from wine.”

This sentence: “refrained from meat and wine” is the only
one of which we can say that, as it stands here, it is strictly true;
and the doctrine it represents is to many an uncomfortable one. But
now this gentleman (for it appears he wishes to be thought a
gentleman) says further on: “That is, however, not true.”
What is not true? “Buddhism speaks of the migration of souls,
Steiner of reincarnation; both are the same. According to this theory
Christ is none other than the reincarnated Buddha, or Buddha
reappeared. Whether it is said that a person reincarnates or that his
earthly life is repeated, it comes to the same thing. All these long
arguments reveal the sophistry of Steiner and his so-called
scientific mind.”

I beg you to notice that in both these forms really one of the most
mischievous pieces of dishonesty possible has been perpetrated. Every
possibility is removed which might enable those who read it to judge
for themselves what the truth is. Up to the present, in all these
long articles, no notice has been taken of Dr. Boos’ answer to
the first attack, in which he mentions, I think, twenty-three lies.
The other piece of dishonesty lies in the following sentence: “This
path is, however, not false but correct.” He had previously
talked a lot of nonsense about the will, and then he goes on to say:
“This path is, however, not false but correct, for the claims
of Christ are based upon the will. Christ Himself says: ‘I have
come into the world to do the will of my Father.’”

Therefore, it is no longer permissible to say that it is a question
of spiritual initiative or anything of that nature. Then he goes on:
“This little example shows how far Steiner is removed from the
true Christian impulse, and proves that to him Christ cannot be the
Divine rules (the Way, the Truth, and the Life) but only the ‘wise
man of Nazareth,’ or in theosophical language, a Jesu ben
Pandira or Guatama Buddha.”

Now compare that with everything that has been said here in
refutation of the modern theological view that one has to see in
Christ Jesus merely the wise man of Nazareth. Think of all that has
been said in this place against this materialistic theory! Yet here,
by our nearest neighbors, we are calumniated, and what I have
unceasingly contested is spread abroad as my own belief. I ask you,
is greater falsehood possible? Can there be a more dishonest method
than this? It is not sufficient to recognize the stupidity of these
things, for you will more and more become aware of the real effects
of such tactics. Therefore, it is essential that we here should
really not sleep through these things, but that we should grasp them
in all earnestness, for today it is really not a question of a small
community here, but it is a great human question; and this great
human question must be clearly seen. It is a question of truth and
falsehood. These things must be taken seriously.

My dear friends, these observations are to be continued here next
Thursday at the same time, and as has been the case today, a few
eurhythmy exercises will precede the lecture. Then I want to take the
opportunity, perhaps next Saturday, of holding a public lecture from
this platform, without polemics, a purely historical lecture showing
the historical basis of all that preceded and led up to the Papal
Encyclical “Pascendi Dominici gregis” of September 1907,
and the results that have followed from it. Therefore, if at all
possible, we shall try to arrange a public lecture here next
Saturday. Next Thursday there will be a kind of continuation of
today’s theme, when we shall go deeper and shall see in
particular what the spiritual life itself has to say to what is
happening today.